See Joe Goddard Make a Beautiful Corpse Sing in ‘She Burns’

Hot Chip producer collaborates with vocalist Mara Carlyle for new single from forthcoming 'Taking Over' EP

“I can’t believe what I have done, I only wanted some fun.” Taken on its own, that couplet from the new Joe Goddard single “She Burns” isn’t particularly heavy. But sung by a beautiful corpse who gives literal meaning to the term “deadpan” in the video above, the line becomes infinitely more haunting. While the Hot Chip producer handles the beat from off-camera, London singer-songwriter Mara Carlyle plays the body.

She coos with understated grace and taps her finger to the ruminative track while a pair of morticians prepare her mostly immobile form for her own funeral. The visuals are equally imbued with black humor and a genuine queasiness as Carlyle is injected with embalming fluids and gussied up — she’s even given fresh flowers to hold near the end.

As an ace remixer, Goddard has similarly dusted off and set to dancing tracks by Dirty Projectors and Jessie Ware of late. Meanwhile, Hot Chip released their distorted new “Dark & Stormy” single yesterday, and member Alexis Taylor recently shared his first release with Fainting By Numbers. “She Burns” will appear on Goddard’s Taking Over EP, set to be released by DFA/Greco-Roman later this year.